Entries in science
(18)

Five years ago we flipped the switch on an idea. We believed that people intuitively recognize the importance of relationships and want to learn what science has to say about what makes relationships work. From these beliefs our slogan was born: “the important things in life deserve data.”

In the five years (!) following our launching Science of Relationships in 2011, it’s been very clear that millions of people agree with us. The site has been more successful than we ever thought, and without a marketing budget our articles have been read nearly 6.5 million times to date. That type of reach would not be possible without our expert contributors’ generosity. Each of them selflessly gives their time and scientific knowledge to help our mission of sharing relationship science with the world.

Essentially, for 5 years we’ve proudly run a website that makes no money, but does a whole lot of good (in our humble opinion) for relationships and the world. And that’s what counts.

Science of Relationships has opened some doors and given us an opportunity to do something we sketched out years before the website was born. A longstanding idea we’ve had on the backburner (since we all have day jobs as professors) was to create a way for people to evaluate their relationships in a scientifically-informed way. After years of not having time to bring the concept to fruition, the phone rang.

On the other end was a television producer from Hollywood who had a similar vision. With the increasing popularity of online dating, there were plenty of apps dedicated to trying to help people find love, but none of these technological tools helped users make sense of their relationships. How do you know if you’re in a good relationship? How do you avoid settling? Are you wasting your time, or should you spend more time to make a good thing better? Ultimately, how do you decide if you should you stay or you should go?

After nearly 2 years of conference calls, focus groups, meetings in Los Angeles, concept development, writing and rewriting questions, data collection, data analysis, deciding on a name, and conversations with our uber-team of programmers, last week it all became a reality.

StayGo™ is the first app for evaluating your relationship across several science-based dimensions. Best of all, StayGo™ is completely free.

June 18th, 2015, isn’t just another day. It is Christian Grey’s birthday and the scheduled release date for E. L. James’ newest romantic thriller, Grey, a companion to the original, Fifty Shades of Grey, told from Christian’s perspective. For fellow Fifty fans looking for a reason to indulge in this guilty pleasure, click here.

Editors note: This post was originally written for the site gapjunctionscience.org.Gap Junction Science is "a network for science faculty who are curious about the ways feminism and science connect. It’s also a home for anyone else interested in the meeting points between science and feminism including, but not limited to, non-academic scientists, trainees (grad students and post docs), and non-scientist scholars" (from their "about" page). You can see the original post here.

A few blog posts back, Sari van Anders pointed out that one connection between science and feminism is their seemingly equal ability to bring out nasty comments. In fact, Sari highlighted Lewis’ Law (and science loves laws) that states that the comments on any feminist post justify the existence of feminism. Not to go making laws in my own name or anything, but if I were to create Blair’s Law in a similar vein it would be that “the comments on anything to do with LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans-identified, queer) research justify research on LGBTQ issues.” In fact, if you take a look, you’ll even find that Blair’s Law can be equally applied to articles written about both good and bad LGBTQ research. Good and Bad? By Good LGBTQ research I mean inclusive, prejudice reducing, diversity promoting, “queers are great” research and by Bad LGBTQ research I mean Regnerus – or research that manipulates and twists the facts in hopes of proving that sexual and gender diversity are examples of abnormality, sickness, perversion and will ultimately bring about the end of the world as we know it!

When people ask me what I do, I talk about being a professor and a social psychologist, but first and foremost I am a scientist, though probably not the type with a white lab coat and microscopes you had in mind. My colleagues and I use scientific perspectives and methods to investigate topics like interpersonal relationships, dreams, and morality. Our fields depend on the integrity of the scientific process (generating hypotheses, testing them with sound methods and measures, and running analyses). This article is about a crucial element of relationship science that, until recently, our journal editors have somewhat neglected: replication.

For centuries, entrepreneurial types have claimed to possess the secrets of romantic attraction, promising that their charms, potions, or drugs are the solution to the search for a perfect mate. With the rise and now ubiquity of the Internet, those offers have moved online and become increasingly sophisticated, but the promise remains the same.

Now, the potions come in the form of mathematical matching algorithms, a new alchemy that takes the basic elements of people—their attitudes, values, and personalities—and promises to transform them into golden dyads.

Image source: rothamsted.bbsrc.ac.ukMuch like a falling tree, if research is published in a journal that nobody reads, does it have much of an impact on people’s lives? A recent study reveals that whereas the amount of scientific research published in academic journals has increased dramatically over the past 10 years, very little (and I mean VERY little— e.g., less than .005% of publications in psychology) makes its way from the halls of academia into the mass media. Not surprisingly, most people don’t have the time to read scientific journals (this is even true of many academics), don't have the background to wade through all the technical jargon, or don't have access to the actual articles.

As this story points out, there is a real need for an effective system that disseminates quality science to a wider audience. This is exactly the mission we’ve embarked upon here at ScienceofRelationships; we’re apparently on the cutting edge of this trend by bringing relationships research to the masses in a manner that makes it useful to people in the real world.

One thing that distinguishes ScienceOfRelationships.com from other sites is the fact that we base all of our articles on published research. But, have you ever wondered “how’d they do that” when reading one of the research findings we’ve reported on? Sometimes learning how things are made, like hot dogs, can make them less enjoyable. However, in the case of relationships, learning how scientists go about studying relationships will give you greater appreciation for how research-based conclusions are drawn (and why they are more informative than others' advice based on their own idosyncratic observations). (For a recap of the importance of research compared to anecdotes and opinion, check out “What is Relationship Science?” and a post on Psychology Today by SofR contributor Dr. Bjarne Holmes on “Setting a Higher Standard for Relationship Advice.”) Basically, learning a bit about the research process will make you a better consumer of the information we discuss on this site.

As most people know, there are persistent barriers and biases that women face in scientific disciplines. But could their relationships be one of them? New research that will be appearing in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin highlights the conflict between the pursuit of romantic relationships and science/math for women.

Science Of Relationships tries to avoid what sometimes happens with relationships research when it gets into the hands of the mainstream media. We stick to the data and present the results that matter without loosing their meaning.

We here at SofR are fond of science. Two reasons we started this site are because we: (a) wanted to get the science of relationships 'out there,' and (b) find that science is undervalued if not outright ignored. A recent article by Chris Mooney addresses the latter. It’s worth the read.

As the first post to the site, I figured it would be a good idea to talk a little bit about what we mean by the scientific study of relationships, and why this might be a good approach for learning about relationships.

Who are the first people that come to mind when you think about "relationships experts"?